Why tenure is important

By Richard Johnson

Published: Monday, April 15, 2013 at 12:44 PM.

So why should you care? Because teacher tenure is good for your child. With tenure I can buck my bosses (within limits) when I think a program some administrator has picked up at a workshop is not that great and maybe even harms learning. Without it, I can’t.

I know beyond a doubt that if tenure is killed, or if it is replaced with something even weaker than the current tepid North Carolina version, teachers will clam up and will not feel able to challenge administration. It is not that administration is always wrong. But sometimes they are and need to be challenged.

However, even under the current system I have seen teachers with tenure afraid to speak up for fear of getting on the bad side of their bosses. In the past I have had teachers without tenure come to me to complain about various directives and say “Richard, I don’t have tenure. I can’t say anything. But you have it and you need to speak up.” So, who speaks up when no one has tenure?

One would think the Republicans currently in power would be sympathetic to this. After all, they spent years in the minority, feeling that their voices were unheard. They also tend to have the most intense clashes with the “Educrats” (in my phrase, “the suits”), while claiming to support the classroom teacher. Well, if they (and you) feel that the people doing the day-to-day job in the classroom know better than the suits in the office about how to teach your child, then they (and you) need to preserve our ability to speak up against harmful policies and directives.

On the other hand, if you want to centralize power in the hands of the bureaucracy, give more weapons to the administrators to use against classroom teachers, and get us to shut up and do as we are told, then kill tenure. But it will not only be teachers who suffer, it will be the children who will no longer have teachers who can stand up for them.

Richard Johnson of Burlington is a teacher in the Caswell County School System.

… only with tenure can they stand up for your child against inane and harmful directives issued by administrators and central office.

Who do you trust to educate your child? The teacher who is in the classroom every day, discovering what works and what does not work, or the administrator who barely knows your child’s name and has not taught in the classroom for 10 years, or the central office suit who has never seen your child and has not been in the classroom for 20 years, or the state legislator who does not even know what school your child goes to and has never taught?

If you trust the classroom teacher, then you need to save that person’s power to stand up for your child. That might sound harsh, but that is what this tenure fight is about.

It also helps to know what tenure is and is not.

In North Carolina it has never been a lifelong job and protection for incompetence. Tenured teachers can be fired, sometimes immediately. For example, if I am insubordinate, if I refuse to carry out an administrator’s lawful directive, I can be fired. With tenure I can complain about the directive, I can talk to other teachers about it, I can inform parents of a harmful directive, I can contact the school board or write the newspaper, but I must carry it out. But without tenure I have to shut my yap because that administrator I am bucking is likely to be the one who at the end of the year recommends whether to renew my contract.

So, what is tenure? It is protection from unwarranted firing. To dismiss they have to have a reason and document it. In some cases they have to give me a chance to correct a problem. But they have to point out my deficiency and say “Fix this or you might be gone.”

So why should you care? Because teacher tenure is good for your child. With tenure I can buck my bosses (within limits) when I think a program some administrator has picked up at a workshop is not that great and maybe even harms learning. Without it, I can’t.

I know beyond a doubt that if tenure is killed, or if it is replaced with something even weaker than the current tepid North Carolina version, teachers will clam up and will not feel able to challenge administration. It is not that administration is always wrong. But sometimes they are and need to be challenged.

However, even under the current system I have seen teachers with tenure afraid to speak up for fear of getting on the bad side of their bosses. In the past I have had teachers without tenure come to me to complain about various directives and say “Richard, I don’t have tenure. I can’t say anything. But you have it and you need to speak up.” So, who speaks up when no one has tenure?

One would think the Republicans currently in power would be sympathetic to this. After all, they spent years in the minority, feeling that their voices were unheard. They also tend to have the most intense clashes with the “Educrats” (in my phrase, “the suits”), while claiming to support the classroom teacher. Well, if they (and you) feel that the people doing the day-to-day job in the classroom know better than the suits in the office about how to teach your child, then they (and you) need to preserve our ability to speak up against harmful policies and directives.

On the other hand, if you want to centralize power in the hands of the bureaucracy, give more weapons to the administrators to use against classroom teachers, and get us to shut up and do as we are told, then kill tenure. But it will not only be teachers who suffer, it will be the children who will no longer have teachers who can stand up for them.

Richard Johnson of Burlington is a teacher in the Caswell County School System.